Where I used to work (back in the 70's) arguing with the boss was a sign that he cared and considered your points of view as being worth debating. For those he had no respect for, he would just order them to do what he wanted, end of conversation. With those whom he felt were good engineers he would argue to make his point or to allow you to make yours. And if decided to pick an argument with you and you backed-down too quickly, after one or two instances of that would soon find yourself getting ONLY 'orders' from the boss. I'm not saying that this was a good way to do business, but there was a 'click' in our office and membership generally had to be earned over years of standing-up for what you believed in while realizing that when the boss WAS right that you had to eventually accept that and graciously 'lose' those arguments. Now it did help if you a graduate of the same university that he was, which was the case for me and 4 other guys in our office, so therefore our 'probation' period for membership into the 'click' was much shorter than others. Again, I'm not claiming that this was a good situation, it's just the way it was, but since I was on the 'inside' I never really questioned it at the time, but in retrospect it's easy now to see how this would have been bad for moral and and eventually productivity.
BTW, being part of the 'click' also meant that when something really crappy had to done, such as go into the field for 3 or 4 weeks and try to save some installation it was guys from the 'click' who always got picked, because the boss trusted us and he knew what we were capable of. And in return, we got the best performance reviews, the chances to work on the fun jobs when they came along as well as getting to attend the tradeshows we exhibited at and when something totally unexpected happened and the boss needed someone he could trust to tell him if this was a good idea or not, then one of us would be given the chance.
Case in point. Back in 1977 when our company first implemented CAD/CAM our boss had no idea what it was or how it could be used effectively in our organization but our parent company had made the decision to have the system installed at our facility and a sister facility in the UK. Our system was going to be used by 3 departments and we were given 6 training credits to send people to classes in SoCal (I was working in Michigan) and so 2 of them were given to my boss. He picked two engineers to go, both members of his 'click' and 3 years later, after my boss had been fired (it was actually over something besides his office 'demeanor', but management used that as the official reason since they knew he couldn't deny it), I decided that this CAD stuff looked like more fun than 'work' and so I contacted the salesman who sold us our system and arranged for an interview and I was hired as a technical sales consultant (AKA 'demo jock') and as they say, the rest is history.
So the moral of the story is, if the boss wants to argue with you, it may be in your best interest to participate as long as you understand the rules since in the end it may be a career-enhancing move and besides, it might put you in a position where you're given the opportunity to try something different leading to a totally new professional direction in your life.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
